Capture the Value of Rebates Through Connected Planning
Large organizations receive a variety of discounts in the form of rebates. And while these rebates present a great opportunity, it’s far too easy for the company to lose track of the many offerings, receipts, invoices, and payments that come with them. This problem results in a decentralization of data—with information spread across emails, datasheets, and other legacy sources.
Cervello’s Rebates Planning & Optimization solution in Anaplan brings together all of the rebate-related data, enabling companies to take a closer look at their rebate positions and maximize the cash flow coming back through the door.
Leveraging Your Organization’s Data
Organizations produce a huge amount of data in their daily operations—data that holds a wealth of value that can be extracted with the right tool. By gathering information from the supply plan, invoices and receipts, service-level agreements, and rebate offerings into one place, we can accurately forecast the total value of rebates that an organization can expect to receive.
Vendor Collaboration
Another inconvenience that comes from working on legacy technology is that rebate information is hard to find and challenging to update. Once a new rebate deal has been offered, it can take weeks for it to be reflected in the forecast, and someone must make sure the information is stored for future reference. With our solution, suppliers become an active part of the process. By enabling them to access specific dashboards to directly update their rebate offerings, we can ensure that those updates are immediately reflected in the forecast, and we can audit the changes that every user of the tool makes.
Optimize Rebates
Being able to forecast rebates based on current supply plans and offerings is just the beginning of what the Rebate Planning & Optimization solution can do. At the heart of the solution, we provide a scenario planning environment where buyers can modify the supply plan to achieve the biggest possible discount from their suppliers. Buyers can input additional purchases and see the new savings immediately in the tool. They can also shift their volume between suppliers and compare which course of action will result in a better outcome for the organization. This can be done at the product level to ensure that no stone goes unturned.
Generating Rebate Forms
One pain point when it comes to rebates is tracking what suppliers owe each month. Since every industry has different criteria for when the organization is eligible for a rebate, we have created a simple way to monitor product receipts and calculate rebate eligibility. . This process allows us to alert the company when it is eligible for a rebate and generate a rebate request form. The form includes the purchase orders and receipts that make up the discount as well as the total dollar amount and terms of repayment.
These forms can be tracked and categorized as sent, viewed, paid, and canceled, allowing the company to keep an eye on the status of each rebate form.
Reviewing Service Levels
After completing the rebate planning process, companies can monitor actual reimbursements paid and forecast expected payments based on both the original and the modified supply plans. The tool can alert organizations if there is a mismatch between the amount owed and the amount received, opening the possibility of comparing service levels among suppliers. Since we can track important metrics such as total discounted amount, percentage of on-time payments, and discount depth, companies gain the ability to quickly assess suppliers’ service levels and create a ground for future negotiations.
Cervello’s Rebate Planning & Optimization solution is a powerful, elegant tool designed to help your company get the most out of your suppliers’ rebate offerings. It connects existing and often siloed information in a way that enables informed procurement decisions. If you are looking for a unique tool to maximize your rebate cash flow, please contact the Cervello team.